Best Audiobooks of 2011

It's that special time of year when we are required to come up with a list of the year's best books.  There were some fantastic audio titles this year, combining perfect narration with gripping stories.  If you haven't heard these, we highly recommend them, whether or not they're the sort of audiobook you'd normally listen to.

Bossypants by Tina Fey

Part memoir, part humourous essays, all wonderful.  Tina Fey relates key moments of humiliation in her life and shows you exactly why 30 Rock is as funny as it is.

Life by Keith Richards

You wouldn't think that a guy who claims to have only slept a couple of days a week for years would still be able to pump out 20 discs worth of a life story, but he does!  Everything is Richards' life is so bizarre and improbably that it's compelling, even if you're not the biggest Stones fan.

At Home by Bill Bryson

Bryson excels at relating history in a way that makes you care.  In At Home, he uses his house as a jumping off point to discuss the origin of all kinds of domestic things, including windows, spices, and home surgery (that one, thankfully, remains in the past).

A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin

Martin's fans had waited for this one for years, but it also brought in a massive new audience (along with the TV version of A Game of Thrones).  Don't jump into the series with this fifth book (do start at the beginning, though!), and beware the cliffhanger ending.

The Reversal by Michael Connelly

Connelly's Harry Bosch series can do no wrong, and many fans said The Reversal was the best entry yet.  Bosch and his half-brother are both working to keep a convicted child molester behind bars--you won't be able to stop listening.

Room by Emma Donoghue

For the more literary among us, try Room.  Even though it's about a child and his mother kept prisoner in a room, the writing and narration make it gripping.  It's rare for an author to let you into the character's head the way Donoghue does with Jack, and fans of The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night-time shouldn't miss it.

Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

Follett is best known for his medieval Pillars of the Earth series, but has now moved on to the 20th century, crafting a saga of five families as they move through World War I.  Thrilling enough for thriller fans, and with enough detail to please history buffs, Fall of Giants has proved to be one of the most popular audiobooks this year.

Listening vs. reading

Ever wonder whether there's a difference in how the brain processes audiobooks versus paper books?  As it turns out, the brain actually creates images better when being read to than when reading from a book.  This will probably come as no surprise to anyone who has listened while staring into space, envisioning the action of the audiobook.  PsychCentral has collected links to the research proving this in a great article:

"What this research revealed perhaps argues for the superiority of the audio book: Reading interferes with imagery.
When you think about it, this makes sense because (as the researchers explain) reading and imagining both require visual representation. It appears that when the visual bits of our brain are busy taking in the written word, there’s less of them available for creating an image of the content."

Click here for the rest of the article--it's definitely worth it! 

Death Comes to Pemberley = "incomparably perfect"

PD James's new audiobook, Death Comes to Pemberley, has just gotten possibly the most positive book review we've ever seen over at USA Today:

"Countless authors writing in a plethora of genres have tried to re-create Austen's Pride and Prejudice, but James' new novel is incomparably perfect. . . Now 91, she's released this magnificent novel. We can only hope for a sequel. We wish P.D. James all the time in the world."

We already have a lot of PD James fans around here, but it sounds like this one should make many more!


Click here for the rest of the review.


Or click here for the audiobook.

Thinking, Fast and Slow

The New York Times has just rated Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow one of the 10 best books of 2011, and it's been getting a lot of positive buzz in the stores as well.  Kahneman delves into human thought processes, particularly how we make snap decisions versus reasoned, logical conclusions.  We could quote the New York Times telling you how important and memorable the book is, but instead here's what they say about why experiences that end unpleasantly are remembered as worse than those that are consistently unpleasant:

"As with colonoscopies, so too with life. It is the remembering self that calls the shots, not the experiencing self."
 
Click here for the rest of the review.

Or click here for the audiobook.

The Drop by Michael Connelly

Fans of the long-running Harry Bosch series will be happy to hear there's a new installment out: The Drop.  This time Harry is closing in on retirement when he gets pulled into two cases, a suicide and a cold case.  CNN interviews Michael Connelly about the new audiobook:


"CNN: What was the spark behind your latest book?
Connelly: Actually, there were a couple different sparks. The book has two parallel stories going through it. One I call the political story. In a turnabout, Harry ends up more or less working for a guy who's been his nemesis in other books. That was an idea suggested to me by a cop a long time ago, and I've been holding on to it, carrying it around with me, waiting for the right time to write that story."

Click here for the rest of the interview.

Click here for the audiobook, or here for more Michael Connelly titles.